What the report found
The 32-page report, compiled by Ontario Health Coalition executive director Natalie Mehra, looked at how much of the city's existing hospital equipment goes unused outside business hours. At Queensway Carleton Hospital, one of its two MRIs closes overnight, while the other shuts down at 3 p.m. on weekdays and doesn't run at all on weekends.
It isn't just imaging equipment sitting idle. Ottawa's hospitals also have dozens of operating rooms, and most of those close by 5 p.m. and stay closed all weekend, the report found.
The private clinic angle
The timing matters because of what the Ontario government has been doing on the other side of the ledger. Queen's Park said last year it would pay $155 million to private businesses to open 57 MRI, CT and endoscopy clinics across the province, with the Ford government funnelling that public money into private MRI and endoscopy clinics in 2025.
Kevin Skerrett, cited in the report, put it more bluntly, saying there has been "a systematic bias against properly maintaining and funding our public health-care system."
The province's response
A Ministry of Health spokesperson, Lily Barnes, defended the province's approach, saying "Ontario is proud to have one of the largest publicly funded health-care systems in the world." The ministry's response didn't directly address the specific overnight and weekend closures identified at Ottawa hospitals in the report.
Why it matters here
For Ottawa residents waiting on an MRI or a surgical slot, the report's core point is a local one: the equipment already exists in this city's hospital network, it just isn't running for large stretches of the day and week. Queensway Carleton's overnight and weekend MRI closures are cited directly as an example of the gap between what capacity exists in Ottawa and how much of it patients can actually access.
Whether the province responds by extending hospital hours, funding more private clinics, or some combination of both, is likely to remain a live question in Ottawa given how much provincial money is already committed to the private clinic model. The Ontario Health Coalition's report puts a number on what's sitting unused in the meantime.
Sources: Ottawa Citizen (via Yahoo News Canada), Ontario Health Coalition
